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Bristol: City Life Captured In Digital Portrait

- Bristol's daily online conversations are brought to life in stunning new artwork by Brendan Dawes commissioned by EE

- Politics and hurricanes most talked about topics in the city

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwire - Jan. 30, 2013) -Bristol: From Strictly to Skyfall to politics and hurricanes, the hot topics that get Bristol talking online have been captured for the first time ever in a unique digital portrait of the city created by world renowned digital artist, Brendan Dawes.

Commissioned by EE to mark the arrival of 4G in the UK, Dawes worked closely with a data analysis team at University College London (UCL), capturing the social media conversations and topics trending across the region over the three day period from 29th - 31st October.

The result is a fascinating digital snapshot of life in Bristol in 2012. Dawes and UCL worked within the categories of sport, politics, film, music, TV, educational, culture and weather - aiming to dig deeper into the topics that affect how people communicate in the city and what they talk about when they go online.

Each chosen topic and the hundreds of thousands of digital conversations associated with them are represented by a specific colour coded keyword. From the keywords at the bottom of the artwork a series of lines flare out to form a myriad of coloured interlinked circles. The thickness of the lines and the size and brightness of the circles represent the popularity of each topic and the frequency at which people were speaking about them.

Steven Day, Chief of Brands and Communications, EE commented: "People know the Bristolian accent as soon as they hear it. Now, for the first time, we've discovered what it actually looks like. EE has launched superfast mobile 4G and Fibre Broadband in Sheffield, and we wanted to mark this in a visual way that everyone in the city can relate to and enjoy."

The political agenda was particularly prominent in Bristol as the Mayoral election was going on during the time, represented by the plethora of blue circles throughout. Discussions about the hurricane in New York represented by the white circles and discussions about money through the vibrant aqua circles also feature throughout.

Brendan Dawes concluded: "It is the people and the activities within it - work, play and the connections within that define a city. This design is a modern sophisticated response to the representation of a city - formed from millions of bits of data as people talk and interact about the biggest events of the day. The shape, derived from nature, evoking the organic nature of a network softens the often harsh representation of digital, leaving instead an impression of a modern dynamic system, that we call cities, in the 21st century."

The key areas that the research focused on during the research period were:

New York

X Factor

Skyfall

Pride of Britain Awards

4G

Money

MPs

Strictly Come Dancing

Happiness

Weather

The artwork will be displayed free to the public at View Art Gallery from 11th December.

The data was captured during 29th to 31st October 2012 the day before, during and after the period in which 4G was introduced to Bristol.

About EE

EE is the UK's most advanced digital communications company in Britain, providing mobile and fixed line services to 27 million customers, and is the first company in the UK to provide 4G mobile services alongside fixed-line fibre.

EE is the company that runs the Orange, T-Mobile and EE brands in the UK.

Its 4G service will cover a third of the population by the end of 2012 and its fibre service will cover 50% of the population by the end of the year.

EE's mobile service currently provides coverage to 99% of the population with 2G and 98% of the population with 3G.